HERBERT S. HADLEY

Governor of Missouri

During recent years, the development of the National idea has carried with it a marked tendency on the part of the people to look to the National Government for the correction of all evils and abuses existing in commercial, industrial, and political affairs.  The importance of the State Governments in the solution of such questions has been minimized, and, in some cases, entirely overlooked, although Congress has been behind, rather than in advance of, public sentiment upon many questions of national importance.  The Congressmen are elected by the people of the different Congressional Districts, and regard their most important duty as looking after the interests of their respective districts.  The United States Senators are elected by the legislatures of the several States, and do not feel that sense of responsibility to the people that is incident to an election by the people.  The Governors of the various States are elected by all of the people of the State, and they are more directly “tribunes of the people” than any other officials, either in our National or State Governments.  These officers will thus give a correct expression of the sentiment of the people of the States upon public questions.

While these expressions of opinion will naturally vary according to the sentiments and opinions of the people of the various States represented, yet, on the whole, they will represent more of progress and more of actual contact with present-day problems than could be secured from any similar number of public officials.  And the addresses and discussions will also tend to mold the opinions of the people and have a marked influence not only upon State, but also upon National legislation.

UNION OF SOUTH AFRICA A.D. 1910

PROF.  STEPHEN LEACOCK

Few historical events have been so impressive as the sudden and complete union of the South-African States.  Seldom have men’s minds progressed so rapidly, their life purposes changed so completely.  In 1902 England, with the aid of her African colonists in Cape Colony and Natal, was ending a bitter war, almost of extermination, against the Dutch “Boers” of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State.  In that year the ablest and most dreaded of England’s enemies in Africa was the Dutch General, Louis Botha, leader of the fiercest and most irreconcilable Boers, who still waged a hopeless guerrilla warfare against all the might of the British Empire.  As one English paper dramatically phrases it:  “One used to see pictures of Botha in the illustrated papers in those days, a gaunt, bearded, formidable figure, with rifle and bandoliers—­the most dangerous of our foes.  To-day he is the chief servant of the King in the Federation, the loyal head of the Administration under the Crown, one of the half-dozen Prime Ministers of the Empire, the responsible representative and virtual ruler of all races, classes, and sects in South Africa, acclaimed by the men he led in the battle and the rout no less than by the men who faced him across the muzzles of the Mausers ten years ago.  Was ever so strange a transformation, so swift an oblivion of old enmities and rancors, so rapid a growth of union and concord out of hatred and strife!”